Date: 25/05/2012
Period: 25 May – 15 July 2012
Event: Ilario Ciaurro. Paintings, sculptures, graphics and ceramics.
The artist Ilario Ciaurro is the protagonist of the exhibition promoted by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Orvieto and hosted at Palazzo Coelli. Five rooms house the 145 works on display: paintings, sculptures, engravings and ceramics from public and private collections, including a selection of 17 works donated by the artist’s granddaughter, Iole Colombini Gasperoni, to the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Orvieto.
The exhibition is curated by Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto and Sabrina Spinazzè for the painting, graphics and sculpture sections and by Alberto Satolli for the ceramics section. Painter, sculptor, engraver, ceramist, interior decorator, writer, art critic, journalist, polemicist and cultural animator, Ilario Ciaurro (Cicciano, Naples, 1889 – Terni 1992) marked an entire century of Umbrian artistic life during his long life. His multifaceted activity, which rarely crossed the boundaries of the local scene, was always carried out with a mature awareness of the artistic trends of his time. From the outset, Ciaurro oriented his pictorial research in an anti-academic, neo-romantic and post-impressionist direction. He never deviated from these principles, even in the second half of the century, but rather enriched them with new ideas, while in his criticism he consciously defended the spontaneity of his vision and his choice of intimate subjects.
In the 1920s and 1930s, therefore, the artist preferred a language based on chromatic and luministic values to the static solidity of much of the painting of the time, also showing himself to be sensitive to the suggestions of archaism and, in particular, to Umbrian painting of the 14th and 15th centuries.
Between Orvieto and Terni, he emerged as a leading figure, appreciated and recognised as a painter, but also as a tireless organiser, a leading member of the Terni School and a brilliant theorist and polemicist (famous, in this regard, for his clash with the futurist Gerardo Dottori). At the same time, putting to good use an irrepressible vocation for craftsmanship, he established himself as one of the leading Umbrian ceramists.
Reconnecting with an ancient tradition through his experience as director of Pericle Perali’s Arte de’ Vascellari factory in Orvieto, which he continued in his own factory founded in 1924 and closed in 1937, he renewed the splendour of medieval ceramics with new iconography and stylistic methods, producing actively for Italy and the United States.
After settling permanently in Terni in 1948 following a period in Lombardy, in the post-war period he became a key figure in the local artistic scene, a cultural animator and a point of reference for younger artists, but also the owner of a new ceramics workshop, which produced everyday objects that were far removed from the medieval revival and attentive to the latest trends in contemporary design, intended for the decoration of public buildings and private homes. He was one of the promoters of the Terni Prize and an active member of the Association of Free Artists and later of the Cenacolo di Torre Orsina. A supporter of figurative art in the heated debate between realism and abstraction, he defended his positions in lively art writings, but at the same time sought reconciliation between the parties when the tone became too heated, as in the case of the 1964 Terni Prize.
Tireless despite his advancing age, from the mid-1950s he travelled with a curious spirit throughout Europe, enriching his language through direct contact with painting from beyond the Alps. His contribution to public life in Terni was also noteworthy. As a municipal councillor, he worked alongside Aurelio De Felice in favour of the opening of the Art Institute, of which he became vice-president. Active until the last days of his life, in the 1980s and 1990s he produced large-format paintings characterised by an extraordinary explosion of colour.
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Date: 21/11/2007
Period: Wednesday 21 November 2007
Event: ERNESTO BIONDI. LA SCULTURA VIVA
Ernesto Biondi (Morolo 1854 – Rome 1917) was one of the most acclaimed Italian sculptors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, he was an artist of international renown, involved in both public commissions (notably the fountains in Cisterna di Latina, Gorga and Montelanico, and the Monument to Montt and Varas in Santiago, Chile) and smaller genre works. He worked intensively to finance two monumental groups, the Saturnali, which won an award at the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris and was purchased by the National Gallery of Modern Art, and the Misere recluse, presented at the 1911 Universal Exhibition in Rome, both characterised by a strong social commitment.
Faithful to his political ideals, evident in the Monumento a Nicola Ricciotti di Frosinone, he took the field on several occasions – in 1906, for example, he headed a democratic list that won the municipal elections in Morolo, his native town – and was a volcanic and passionate polemicist, ready to put himself on the line to renew the Roman artistic environment or to defend the peasants of his native Ciociaria. This monograph, promoted by the Municipality of Morolo and produced with the contribution of the Lazio Region by the Archivio dell’Ottocento Romano association in collaboration with the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto and with the patronage of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, does justice to an artist who, almost a century after his death, was still awaiting an exhaustive study.
A group of scholars, coordinated by Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto and Sabrina Spinazzè, analysed Biondi’s work in its various aspects. During their research, unknown works were discovered, such as Sant’Onesimo in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, the Mengozzi Huber and Arata Scialdoni tombs in the Verano Cemetery in Rome, the Pietromarchi and Pagliaro tombs in the church of San Lorenzo in Anagni, the Nennella and Ciccillo heads, both in private collections, the figurines from the Surdi nativity scene in the Museum of Rome and the head of Pastorello in the Modern Art Gallery in Cagliari.
The rich documentary material found in archives and libraries proved to be of extraordinary importance for understanding the artist, including letters sent to Ugo Ojetti and Ettore Ferrari, preserved respectively in the Historical Archives of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and the Central State Archives, and the fascinating correspondence with Vittore Grubicy, currently deposited at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Trento and Rovereto, which includes more than 150 letters published in their entirety, curated by Monica Vinardi. The essays in the volume correct dates, eliminate inaccuracies perpetuated by the bibliography on the artist and add information and facts that had been lost.
After an introductory text by Gianluca Berardi, Monica Vinardi addresses the more commercial beginnings linked to the Nelli foundry and his work for the Schioppa & Cacciapuoti ceramics factory. Public commissions are described in the contributions by Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto, dedicated to fountains, Sant’Onesimo in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls and Gaio in the Palace of Justice in Rome, and in that by Stefano Grandesso on monumental sculpture. Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto also deals with the highly interesting funerary production. Biondi’s best-known work, Saturnalia at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, is analysed in depth by Stefania Frezzotti. Social themes, with particular attention to Dies irae, a pivotal work of his political realism, and Misere recluse, an exceptional masterpiece of his maturity, are explored in Sabrina Spinazzè’s essay.
